The Role of Sedad Hakkı Eldem in Establishing Cultural Identity in the Late 1930s and Early 1940s Turkish Architecture
Abstract
Sedad Hakkı Eldem’s lifetime coincides with a turbulent time of Turkish society. Those were the days when long felt Ottomanness was still a strong impact upon the lives of Turkish people but at the same time the young republic was beginning to experience differences that the Western world would offer together with the modernization and change of notions. Eldem was born into a well off and culturally Ottoman and Anatolian family and naturally was raised with the ideals of such a family. However, he was lucky enough to receive the best of educations both in his country and abroad. As he was growing up, he was able to absorb the notions of different cultures while putting them in separate places in his mind so that they could co-exist. With this analytical and cosmopolitan approach, he tried to feed his view concepts of traditionalism and modernism at the same time. Having shouldered such a difficult task like compromising supposedly opposite/different views makes Sedad Hakkı Eldem him a “State Architect”. Sedad Hakkı Eldem is not only an eminent architect but also a historian, a sociologist and a renowned intellectual who through his work served as an “ambassador” of the culture he had always advocated. With this dissertation Sedad Hakkı Eldem’s biography, his philosophy of national architecture and some of his works will be brought to daylight. His efforts of being national yet not denying other architectural techniques will be investigated.
The aim of this dissertation is to make a discursive analysis of what so-called Turkish House offered as it emerged from Ottoman obscurity between the last decade of the 19th century and the end of the 1930s. Political regimes are often meant to communicate through certain ideals and architecture and it is one of those forms of signification. Architecture has the capacity to guide our thinking and it may structure our thoughts. Therefore, cultural systems use architecture to transfer deeper meanings of accepted culture. It’s mainly culture that influences urbanization and forms of architecture while shaping and determining cultural, political and everyday issues. With the global rise of nationalism and globalism, the role architects directly experience in reconsidering political and cultural problems have increased. As a symbolic and material aspect of human life, architecture reflects the living culture in every society and interacts with the structural, historical and the economic and social characteristics of the community. By the creation and use of architecture people in every country observe their norms and maintain their values. In every region in the world, architectural identity has variations dictated by their norms. In this respect, Turkey is no different and Turkey’s architecture goes back to Byzantine times and buildings from then stand side by side with buildings later in time. The old and the modern seem to have blended in the eyes of people. Taking into consideration the huge time difference in which these buildings were erected each construction be it a palace, church, mosque or other needs to be considered from the perspective of its individual time and culture. In this respect, Turkey represents a huge laboratory with a vast number of examples from many different artistic architectural values.
The 1930s were times when personal communication was through letters more than anything. Not having fax, computer, cell phone or even tv forced people to correspond through letters. Sedad Hakkı Eldem was an earnest writer of letters both personally and professionally. He had connections with several prestigious foreign names, universities and cultural institutions. Among his correspondence, highly qualified researchers and engaged intellectuals specialized in vernacular architecture and the reflections of the attempts of the Turkish / Ottoman house.
Sedad Hakkı Eldem’s efforts in collecting the necessary materials for his archive and his publicly sharing the outcomes of his research and materials made him a popular figure both in his own country and through his publications and personal context in the atmosphere of well-known architects in his lifetime.
To give a true picture of Sedad Hakkı Eldem it will be proper to say he should be counted among the outstanding of the Modern, and a true ambassador of Turkish architecture in the world. As a descendant of a family of several diplomats, Eldem manages to raise his profession to an intellectual level and successfully carried on cultural relations with colleagues both nationally and internationally.